Primary: 5 Objectives
Secondary: Table Quarters w/ Scoring Units
The first match of the game I was paired up against Aaron and his nice looking blood angel army. One of the other big reasons I come did enjoy playing in big tournaments in my hay day was being able to play against completely painted armies so it was nice to do that again. He was running Dante with a squad of Sanguinary guard and a priest, a tac squad with a plasma cannon, a storm raven, and a furioso in a pod with some sort of gun (I cant remember which). His allies were Straken with a small squad of some sort, harker with a squad of vets I think it was, an aegis with a quad gun, and 3 basilisks. I'm really quite thankful they were basilisks and not medusas...
The deployment was short table edges, but it was modified to be a 24"x36" square in opposite corners rather than the entire table edge. I deployed my Bastion with Coteaz and the Servitors at the front of my lines, the vindicator running the icarus, the missile launchers were just anyplace they could get a good vantage point over the entire field, and the speeders were taking cover behind the bastion.
The dreadnaught dropped in turn 1 and my intercepting guns annihilated it... I dropped in and made positions around the aegis to give plenty of targets. The dice were quite kind to me and I was able to roll pretty average or slightly above. The only thing that I ever had trouble with was his deathstar that dropped in my back lines behind my bastion, hidden just barely from the las cannon by his drop pod. I was hoping to be able to take out his damn priest before he gave the squad FNP. I did not know that line of sight was important when intercepting. I was thinking that it was more "as they were dropping" rather than after they were already down. Oh well. A lucky single wound from the basilisks took out the vindicare (maybe I do wish they were medusas... no probably still not), even through my 2+ cover.
The Sang. Guard were able to take out pretty much my entire back lines save for the bastion and the guys inside, who were nasty. I was finally able to get the squad down to just Dante and the Priest by the end of the game, who were no longer really threats to the mission objectives.
I was able to kill ever model save for the priest and Dante who were finally able to take out the servitors and Coteaz by lobbing grenades into the building. They just hit behind the bastion afterwords. It was a great game that really started to turn my way in the second half. 19 out of 20 points for the Deathwing.
ROUND 2: Eldar
Primary: 3 Objectives
Secondary: Cant remember
Game two, everything really REALLY started going to hell...
I was up against John with a reasonable list, but with enough firepower that I was not completely unconcerned. I wasn't that worried though. He had a farseer, an avatar, a squad of rangers, 2 squads of dire avengers in wave serpents, a squad of fire dragons in a wave serpent, a squad of war walkers (of course), a squad of warp spiders, and the bad ass Forge World D-cannon take who's name escapes me. In hind sight, I probably would have used the terminators a little differently, but that might be clouded by what happened in the game...
For an example, I went first and got Presience and Perfect Timing on my rolls for Coteaz... Sounds great! No cover saves for the rangers?! NICE!.. yeah, not so nice. Roll to cast presience... 2, 1, 1... Well, that sucks, but at least it still goes off... Roll for Perfect Timing... 1, 1, 1... yeah, first blood goes to the Eldar due to my shitty dice. It never really improved after that. The first turn, a good 40-50% of my dice were 1s. All my missiles, the las cannon, the missile launchers, all that shooting did in total two hull points to one of the tanks, that's it. Dire avengers hop out and bladestorm one squad, 10 wounds, all 5 terminators die... yeah, the whole turn and most of the game was like that. For some reason, I made almost all of my invulns all game, so why not assault the Avatar! Sadly, he only lasted a couple of turns before my termies killed him... Yay, at least I got slay the warlord. All of those termies died next turn.
The only thing good that happened for me the entire game was the vindicare intercepting the spiders and las-sniping out the exarch. 5 out of 20 for the Deathwing... ouch.
ROUND 3: Space Wolves
Primary: Kill Points
Secondary: Slay the Warlord, First Blood
Still reeling a little from the annihilation during game 2, I had high hopes. Sadly, I don't remember my opponents name, but he was running 2 squads of grey hunters with a bunch of plasma, a squad of long fangs with an assortment of guns, an aegis with a quad gun, a squad of dogs, a wolflord on a dog, and a squad of wolf guard termies in a drop pod.
My tactics in this game were sound and I was able to strand his termies on the wrong side of the board, and his dogs far enough on one flank that if I could just roll some friggin average dice I could wipe out most if not all of the grey hunters before the big guys were even involved in the fight... Yeah, no such luck. I'd say my dice improved from 50% ones, to about 1:3. Still nowhere near good enough. It was a pretty close fight at first and I was able to take out the long fangs early, but it went downhill from there, 4" failed charge... 3" failed charge... and FAR too many 1s for armor saves and there was nothing I could really do... The game was closer for sure than game 2, but still nowhere near close at all. I can definitely say that vindicare is quite dirty running that las cannon though, ouch. Another 5 out of 20 for the Deathwing.
